ST MARK OF EPHESUS ON THE CONDEMNATION OF HERETICS

 

ST MARK OF EPHESUS ON THE CONDEMNATION OF HERETICS

 

At the news, Markos trusted the sincerity of his emperor’s assurances that no harm was to come to him and went before Pope Eugenius sometime after July 12, 1439. Markos entered the papal apartments, where six cardinals and bishops flanked the pontiff. According to his custom, Markos made a reverence to the pope, who then spoke at length to persuade Markos to follow the synod and support the union. Pope Eugenius concluded by warning Markos, if he did not agree, that he would be liable, as a noncompliant, to suffer the fate of the disobedient as in prior ecumenical councils. The penalties were always deposition and denomination as a “heretic” for anyone who might think it correct to preach against an ecumenical assembly or its declarations.

Yet, Markos’s knowledge of the process and minutes of ecumenical councils came from years of editing and copying their content. In this light, Markos’s rejoinder to Pope Eugenius, after intimation of forthcoming penalties, was based upon canonical processes of prior ecumenical councils. Syropoulos [1] only informs us that Markos supplied responses for each papal query. Markos probably drew the Latins’ attention to the non-canonical nature of forbidding his public reading of prior decrees and canons of the first seven councils, as he had already complained in public sessions. After listing other misgivings, Markos gave his estimation of how past ecumenical councils condemned heretics for noncompliance:

“The [ecumenical] synods were accustomed to condemn those who were noncompliant to the Church, but such as were adding to some doctrine in opposition to the Church and preaching the same, as well as causing dissension on this. For this reason [the synods] were accustomed, too, to call such heretics. Yet, first of all, they used to condemn the heresy, then [condemn] those who upheld the very same heresy. Now, I do not preach my own doctrine, nor have I innovated [ἐκαινότομησα] on something, nor do I insert some foreign and illegitimate dogma, rather I immerse myself in the unmixed doctrine, which the Church received and to which it holds from the time of the Savior until now, which [doctrine] the Roman Church also held prior to the schism along with our holy Church of the East [viz., Constantinople V (879–880)]. Indeed, this pious doctrine you always lauded in times prior, and you praised it many times over in the present synod, and nobody can be harmed accordingly or accuse this same doctrine of something. If, then, I lay claim to this doctrine and do not desire to turn away from it in the slightest, how will I have been condemned, for that which heretics were condemned? Who would be the man of pious and sane thinking to do such a thing as this against me? Wherefore, first of all, it is necessary to condemn the doctrine that I am declaring. Yet if this doctrine is confessed to be pious and orthodox, how am I worthy of condemnation?”

[1] Sylvester Syropoulos, Les “Mémoires” du Grand Ecclésiarque de l’Église de Constantinople Sylvestre Syropoulos sur le concile de Florence (1438-1439), ed. by Venance Laurent (Concilium Florentinum Documenta et Scriptores: Series B, vol. 9), Rome 1971.

Source: Orthodox Reception of Ps.-Pope Sylvester I and Ps.-Symmachus’s Canon: “The First See is Judged by no Human Being”: Byzantine Canon Law from Photios to Markos of Ephesus, by Christiaan Kappes, pp. 45-46.